Soldier may be unfit to appear at inquest into fatal 1971 shooting
Question are raised over veteran’s competence
THE inquest into the shooting of a Londonderry mother-of-six almost 50 years ago heard there could be questions around the competence of a former soldier who may have fired the fatal shots to give evidence.
Kathleen Thompson (47) was killed in disputed circumstances outside her home in Creggan during an Army operation in 1971.
As the resumed inquest concluded for the week, Coroner Sandra Crawford was told witness KTM72, scheduled to give evidence next week, could have “an underlying difficulty”.
The inquest was told that the witness had been in a serious accident in 1974 and requests had been made for a neurological report to assess his competence.
Counsel for KTM72, Joseph Aiken, said he could not access the medical notes and records by next Wednesday.
The inquest also heard from a former soldier who mistakenly made a statement saying he was absent without official leave when the shooting occurred.
The veteran, identified as Soldier KTM 1039, made a statement on December 15, 2020 in which he claimed he was stationed at Foyle Road in Derry.
He said he had no recollection of the incident in which Mrs Thompson was shot, and said it would have resonated with him due to the fact his own mother died earlier that year.
He claimed that following this, andanargumentwithhisfather, he went AWOL in the summer of 1971 and remained at large until he handed himself in to military authorities in September of that year.
He was sentenced to 156 days in military custody and returned to his regiment upon his release.
The witness said he thinks he would have recalled hearing about the death “of an innocent lady”.
However, under questioning by Ian Skelt QC, counsel for the Coroner, KTM 1039 was asked about a regimental record from August 23, 1972 that referred to him being AWOL since July 29, 1972.
The witness said for the last 50 years he’d believed that he had gone AWOL in 1971, but said he would not argue with the record.
The inquest was told that KTM 1039 had been promoted to lance corporal in December 1971, but the witness said this was not the result of him attending a training course.
‘Kathleen was killed in the course of that operation’
Karen Quinlivan QC, for the Thompson family, told the witness the significance of this course.
She said: “Soldiers on this course were sent out as part of an operation, an arrest operation. In the course of that operation one soldier fired shots into a back garden and Kathleen Thompson was killed in the course of that operation.
“Evidence suggests that people on that course were present when that happened.”
The witness said he had no recollection of taking part in that
course and he did not accept his memory could be wrong.
Theformersoldiersaidhehad not patrolled in Creggan during his time in Derry.
He said the only thing that stood out for him during his time in Derry was acting as support for the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday and providing escorts for the Widgery Tribunal.
Ms Quinlivan accused the witness of “choosing not to help the inquiry”.
He denied this.
The inquest continues next week.
THIS was the spectacular sight as Mount Etna erupted, sending smoke and ash billowing into the sky.
Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
The latest eruption at the south-eastern crater began on
Tuesday and sent columns of ash rising more than 3,000ft into the air.
Footage showed smoke glowing red and yellow and stretching for miles across the sky.
At one point officials closed the airport at Catania after deeming it was unsafe to fly.
Authorities were monitoring the situation closely in the three villages at the foot of the volcano — Linguaglossa, Fornazzo and Milo.
Stefano Branco, head of the INGV National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said the latest burst of activity was “not at all worrying”, adding: “We’ve seen worse”.
By yesterday afternoon volcanic activity had started to ease. Mount Etna’s last major eruption was in 1992.
It erupted in May 2019 after an increase in seismic activity lead to lava spewing out of the Sicilian volcano.
It is the highest active volcano in Europe at two-and-a-half times the next largest, Mount Vesuvius in the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy.